Album review: Dexys, One Day I’m Going To Soar

BMG, £11.99*****

This is a simply glorious new album from the one-time young soul rebels who, 27 years on from their last album, have absorbed the lessons, licked the wounds and fused Stax revue with music hall storytelling.

Kevin Rowland’s vocal spar with Madeleine Hyland bursts at the seams with kitchen sink drama and ruptured rationale – her shrieks of “Kevin!” are charged with dramatic intensity. Partial resolution is suggested by Incapable Of Love, the sprightly brass part smoothing out the friction. However, this is a sideshow to Rowland’s rambunctious main event. Nowhere Is Home and She Got A Wiggle have soul in spades, smoothly spreading it out on the roughest of rare grooves.

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Trusted lieutenants Jimmy Patterson, on trombone, and keyboard players Al Archer and Mick Talbot are all on board, as well as Come On Eileen-era fiddler Helen O’Hara, but what characterises the sound more than any of these distinguished contributors is the basic shoe box and biscuit tin drum sound. It earths the music in the most honest way imaginable.

Kevin’s voice is stripped of the most excessive idiosyncrasies to reveal and remind us what a soulful instrument his voice can be, as he yowls and croons with great control. Sweet, charming and seductive, this is a quite sensational return.

Colin Somerville

Download this: She Got A Wiggle, Nowhere Is Home, Incapable Of Love